Jakarta, April 13 (NNN-ANTARA) The Indonesian government will soon summon the Indian ambassador to Indonesia to ask for clarification of a recent incident in which two Garuda Indonesia planes were forced to reroute their flights due to an Indian ballistic missile test.
"We will try to get clarification from the Indian side on the incident," Foreign Ministry spokesman Y. Kristiarto S. Legowo told the press here on Friday.
He said two Garuda planes which were respectively heading for Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq, were forced to change their routes and eventually had to return to Jakarta on Thursday due to the test-firing of an Indian nuclear capable intermediate-range ballistic missile.
"The Garuda planes were forced to reroute their flights because of the test and in the end returned to Jakarta," he said.
He said the Indonesian government needed to get an explanation from India on the case soon.
"We hope that countries in the region will each contribute to the maintenance of good neighbourliness, including in this case," Y. Kristiarto S. Legowo said.
An official of Indonesia-flag carrier Garuda Indonesia earlier said that the Garuda planes were flying over Colombo and India when they were forced to reroute.
Garuda had not received any prior warning about the missile test, he said.
India announced Thursday it had successfully test-fired a nuclear-capable intermediate-range ballistic missile that can reach the Chinese cities of Beijing and Shanghai.
The Agni-III missile was launched from Wheeler Island, 180 km northeast of Bhubaneswar, capital of the eastern state of Orissa.
Kristiarto Legowo said the Indian ambassador must explain as soon as possible why the incident happened since the airspace should have been closed.
"Usually closed airspace is alerted to international authorities but the fact is, our plane flew and had to return," he said.
The ministry could lodge a formal protest over the incident, Indonesia's Transport Minister Hatta Rajasa told the Kompas newspaper.
"There was no prior information about the test," the national carrier's operations director Ari Sapari was quoted as saying in the report.
"This clearly disrupted our schedule and caused us big losses," Sapari was quoted as saying. The plane resumed its journey four hours later.
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